I found it was becoming increasingly hard to find rented places that would allow me to have a cat - and it WAS the letting agents causing the problems, not the individual landlords. When we were looking a few years ago I specifically told the LA "look we've got a somewhat elderly three legged moggie and I don't want to be shown places to view, fall in love with one and then be told that she's not a possibility" - basically asked them to only flag up places where cat-negotiations were likely to be open, and it was fine - viewed the house, quick phonecall from LA to LL saying "look this is a decent couple - but they want permission to keep a cat" - job done and place signed for within an hour.
When we wanted to move however the recession had hit good and proper and rentals had gone insane around here - the letting agencies had all moved to a "we don't allow pets, we're not even going to make a phonecall to a landlord to ask for you until you've paid about £500 in holding deposits and application fees, if you don't like it, tough cos there'll be another 5 people along in a minute wanting any house you have your eye on." We ended up ransacking the bank of mum and dad to buy a place - just so we could get out of the bad DIY hellhole we were in and still keep the tripod (very expensive cat that required a 2 bed semi to be bought for her bed). Might just be this area but we were going to get zero joy out of the dominant lettings agency around here - if we'd hung fire we would probably have got somewhere through the lettings agency we were already renting with (they were desperate to keep us as proven good tenants), but we were right on the edge of their operating area and they didn't get many properties through at all.
Have had to pay increased deposits (although the time my mum negotiated a 25% reduction in the pet-damage additional deposit on the basis she had 25% less claws than the average cat), or had carpet cleaning clauses in most houses I've rented over the years.
Some people reckon they've had more luck going through places like the newspaper small ads since letting agencies appear to be riding high and it's brought their worst wide boy tendencies to the fore at the moment - I think the locally mooted figures are 6 tenants chasing every rented property around here.
